Flowers are a beautiful gift of the earth, so my choice for this week was made very quickly. There are many stunning organic patterns to draw a nice composition with. Some of you will remember this tile, which I have made for my latest blogpost, dedicated to earth day. I have used only one Compass Daisy on a background of watercolours and natural Bistre. It is time, to take better care of our wonderful planet, all together we can do that!

It is important to reflect regulary on our consumption habits and try to reduce the impact on our planet.

Every little bit helps, and therefore we can, despite all the negative posts, no matter how small, do an effort to cope better with our environment and contribute also to a cleaner world for everyone.

Some simple tips:

Do you have a garden? Try to lure bees and butterflies (by placing insects hotels, butterfly trees, flowers …)

Less intensive stock breeding, less meat, means less warming, less animal suffering and more life on earth. Try a Pita of thevegetarian butcher. With a delicious garlic sauce and some fresh raw vegetables, this is a surprisingly tasty, balanced lunch.

Lavender bags in wardrobes, lemon peels in a bowl of vinegar in the refrigerator, sodium bicarbonate with a drop of tea-tree oil in the litter box, selfmade air freshener … This is all natural stuff in order to obtain pleasant scents without using harmful chemicals.

Translation for a natural air freshener: 200 ml of distilled water, 2 tabelspoons Wodka and 20 drops of your favorite essential oil together in a plant sprayer and shake well … ready.

Do we really need all those artificial perfumes, lotions, creams, soaps, gels? Just click on the site of Skindeep. With a little searching you can find all the ingredients of your own products. You will be surprised how much trash manufacturers put in their products. .. On the other hand, jojoba oil, is a real little tresor for our skin and the price is nice. It sounds weird but this ” oil” is both particularly well for oily skin that tends to acne and dry skin. It doesn’t feel greasy at all and just a little bottle gives you months the best care you can imagine.

Bying local and fair trade products and avoiding as much as possible plastics, are lowering significantly our ecologic footprints

With a little creativity you can certainly find more challenges… and that will give you a fine and happy feeling!

Wild flowers are a wonderful gift of the earth , look at these short but intense beautiness during the spring in the South African desert:

Also much closer, in the Belgian Ardennes, the wood anemones (also called windflower, thimbleweed, or smell fox) now make a beautiful white carpet. It only takes just a few weeks but I love to see this, every year again. In other places in Belgium, dominate the purple color of the Bluebells.

Flowers are not only beautiful to look at, there are several types you can eat. The cheerful orange Nasturtium (Indian cress or monks cress) tastes delicious (a bit like radishes) and they brighten up your risottos and fresh salads.

Flowers are alsoa gratefulsubjectto draw. You can find many beautiful organic patterns. I have all my favorites drawn in a Leporello booklet. I don’ need to surch anymore on the Internet but immediately I can see the most beautiful tangles in that little book. I also havesuch abookletwith gridpatterns andonewith borderpatterns.(I honestly admitthatI regularly“forget” tangles andthese booklets arethena handy tool)

Let’s show some examples of tiles with a lot of organic tangles: here is a Renaissance Zendalatile with on the top right Laflor, Abeko, Curly Q, String Rose, Boxwood, Printemps, Alabastro, Flux and Morning Glory.

In the following movie you can easily follow how Elena Babayants draws this beautiful flower motif :

Ikebana or Japanese flower art is very elegant but more difficult than it seems at first sight. Here too I found inspiration to create a tile with flowers. Eastern Lily is the star along with Fricle and Eddy.

Helen Williams, a very talented lady from Australia has an interesting blog where you can find many organic tangles. There I saw for the first time to draw gridtangles not always straight but in a in a more “wonky grid ‘. Below an attempt with Florez, surrounded by a few Pokeleafs and dewdrops.

Then I noticed Compass Daisy, a simple easy pattern but please draw it carefully and accurately. It is beautiful in combination with other tangles but also very suitable as a monotangle. I have only drawn one on a background of watercolor and Bistrepowder

Every morning, I look through the window and I see the violets in our flower boxes, they inspired me for the following tile:

The fun pattern Plum-lei looks a bit like a violet. I made a composition that I have finished with Lapin (Susie Ngamsuwan) as a framework.

And finally, you see another tile, inspired by. Laura’s challenge (311). I used : Cuttle, NKD, Patience, NZeppel and Peek-a-boo-Daisy.

Of course I was quite happy with the challenge no 190 of Adele Bruno. She suggested a combination of Wind farm,Box Spirals. and Nouvart. Not a simple task but I saw wonderful results appearing and I thank Adele for this challenge and all participants for their commitment and interest.

Below you can see my entry, you can admire the other tiles on Adele’ site:

On Susie Ngamsuwan’s website I discovered a beautiful monotangle of Nouvart wich reminds me to ice crystals. Susie is a talented tangler who lives in Thailand. She can make something special and refreshing of every pattern and I admire her personal style.

Reena Soni also shows a nice work in which she integrated Nouvart in a delicate way. (I met this sympathetic lady during the 22nd CZT seminar) You can follow her on instagram.

This combination of Zimba and Siri, along with organic patterns is lovely, isn’t it? It was one of the entries of Annette Plaga for the Diva’s challenge (312)

To end,you see a picture of my contribution for her 7th mosaic. You can see the results of the participants on her site. On the 10 th of may, the 8th project will start. I’m already looking forward to join again. Everyone is welcome to be a part of a great mosaic and will receive a small personal mosaic afterwards. Thank you Annette for your commitment and creativity and I wish you succes for the next one!

I like to finish with a nice quote and a little piece of music:

Hans Zimmer wrote Now we are free for the movie Gladiator. The music is mounted by Chris Demian on spectacular images of our fragile planet, a suitable contribution for this special day:

I’m fond of this challenge. First I took a black tile on which I dropped some bleach and rinsed it with water to neutralize the bleach. When the tile was dry, I splashed a little bit of watercolours on the bleach and let it dry again. Than I started with a white gelpen to draw CO2 and the frontiers of the colored places, followed by NKD ( with black pen)and the lovely 5C Aura (by Ina Sonnenmoser), Anita Westin showed us this wonderful tangle last week and it was love at first sight for me, an easy and beautiful tangle.To finish I have chosen for Min-line and Msst.

A very pleasant challenge that gives you a lot of possibilities. Last week, I coudn’t join, therefore, I have put Frunky in the middle between a lot of other tangles: Strutz, Patience, Min-line, Pixiose, Eddy, Shattuck, Hybrid, Tipple and the fragment K14. The tile is made on my favorite background: watercolor and Bistrepowder. Afterwards, I colored also a bit with ordinary colorpencils and for the highlights, I can’t miss my white gellypen!